Simon Alexandre
Simon Alexandre is currently a bisexual Prefect in Grade 12 at Ashford Academy. He's 18 years old, and is played by Fivvy. He has the debilitating mental disease of PTSD that defines him as a person, due to the abuse he suffered when he was younger. He's known for working hard, acting relatively happy, and being extremely skittish. After his father blew the secret of his powers, he wound up at Ashford Academy. Personality Simon is a relatively tense individual who tends to stray away from conflict when he can, but he will fight if he needs to. When he's on duty, he tends to avoid goofing off but otherwise he's one to make dick jokes and laugh around with his friends, although he'll never get very close to anyone. He has relatively huge trust issues that prevent him from becoming good friends with anyone, and he's never actually had a best friend in his life. He's a bit blunt too, willing to say what he thinks unless he's scared of getting hurt, but he's also obedient and if he's told by a commander to do something, he'll be completely willing to do so. The teenager is also very intuitive, relying on his instincts to guide him through life. This doesn't mean he can't stop and think sometimes, as he is intelligent, he just prefers to act based on improvisation rather than preparing in advance for what is to come. However, despite him used to being surprised because of this trait, Simon is very skittish and loud noises or sudden movements will cause him to jump ten feet in the air, making him seem like more of a coward than he is. Simon is emotionally repressed, as he has never spoken about his truest feelings to anyone, not even his mother. If he was to ever do so, he would almost completely break down and stop functioning normally, unable to think straight, as confronting his problems by telling them to other people would go against what he's done his whole life. His PTSD Simon, from his past, does have a form of PTSD (post traumatic stress disorder), although it's undiagnosed. His symptoms include nightmares, flashbacks, feelings of intense distress when reminded of the event or extreme physical reactions (heart pounding, rapid breathing) when thinking about what happened to him. This is accompanied with trust issues, causing him to be skittish and jump very easily (which he passes off as a joke), and muscle aches and pains all over his body which can't be explained by really any other reason. Simon refuses to acknowledge the seriousness of his 'disease', not wanting to put himself on par with war veterans with the disorder as he views his problems as not as impactful. However, it does debilitate him and is not something that is just a 'aww what a cute quirk he has'. His feelings of almost constant distress prevent him from sleeping, and being unable to make strong connections with people prevents him from healing and from getting the help he so desperately needs - and can you imagine and how annoying it would be to talk to someone and try to get to know them and have them shove you away almost violently for seemingly no reason? Because of his father's methods of abuse, Simon gets a bit uncomfortable around big sources of water and he tends to try to keep his head above it if he does go for a swim. This isn't a huge fear, though, and isn't absolutely crippling unless he's unlucky enough to receive flashbacks (will be explained in more depth later) while in or standing by the water, although its unlikely. He does tend to try and avoid swimming for this reason, though. Simon does also have a reaction of fear to loud noises, mainly when people yelling at him. He can't stand the aggressiveness and tends to react mainly by cowering or sudden rapid breathing when people start screaming, especially if the words spoken are offensive. He doesn't necessarily react extremely badly by having flashbacks, although he does get the physical reactions of his heart pounding and his breathing accelerating to an unnatural rate. This is, again, because of his history with his father shouting at him while he was being abused, striking him with offensive words and actions. In contrast to Simon’s openness to critiquing others, Simon has never been the best to show his emotions, always trying to conceal his feelings especially if they’re negative. He has trust issues and finds difficulty in allowing people to find out more about him, taking years to tell even his closest friends about his history. Therefore, he’s generally not too easy to manipulate unless one can play off of his intuitiveness, but that's something that he might be able to pick up on. Simon will not drink alcohol, nor do drugs of any form (apart from caffeine). It's a huge discomfort to him to even see alcohol being used by other individuals, because of his father's alcoholic tendencies contributing to the beating that repeated everyday that Simon was with him. He doesn't have the same issue around people who smoke, and will still be able to have a conversation with them (although he will be distasteful), but alcohol is something that 'triggers' him into a state of unsureness and fear, and in high doses (being in parties and such), it's likely he'll have a panic attack. Simon, although not triggered by this whatsoever, tends to stay away from anyone that strongly resembles his father and he tends to be distasteful of the type of people that are like him. This tends to be burly, strong-looking men who are very tall and tend to be a little bit on the dumber side, and also those who anger easily. This is simply a natural response to avoid the type of people who may hurt him again. Additionally (as mentioned previously), Simon will occasionally break down into tears while trying to sleep and/or snap awake, as he does occasionally get what's known as 'flashbacks', where he's forced to relive what he's once been through almost like a very realistic feeling dream, where he cannot wake up or change anything happening to him. This can also happen during the day when he sees things that remind him of his past, but he tends to not react as strongly as he tries his absolute hardest to hold it back, but he tends to fail and still mentally break down. This gives him a strong weakness to people who can create illusions and see into his dreams, because they're able to see what part of him no one else can and recreate it during battles, which will make Simon mentally shut down almost indefinitely. The problem with all of Simon's triggers, is that he avoids them to the point where it's almost as problematic as the disorder itself. If he hears lots of people in a room late at night, or loud music playing, he associates that with the idea of parties with excessive drinking and he can't help but get away from whatever it is, even if he's on duty and supposed to stop those kind of things. He avoids the pool as much as he possibly can, too, and he has a natural tendency to avoid people that are loud or obnoxious. Sometimes he'll go to extreme lengths to avoid these episodes of breaking down, almost as if it was a phobia, staying away from anything that might possibly lead him to being exposed to any of his triggers. This is partly because he, although he knows that he does have PTSD deep down, refuses to acknowledge it completely and doesn't want to have anything to do with it, thinking that if he doesn't go near what triggers him he won't have any issues. It's also because he's still as scared of his father as he was when he was a child, not wanting to have anything to do with him, and he doesn't want anyone to know his debilitating problems so he hides it best he can. It's debatable that no one actually properly knows about his PTSD, not even either of his parents or his friends, and it's probably not something that could even be found on his file as he has never told anyone about his problems, partly because he can't properly acknowledge them himself. Additionally, even his father didn't tell the officials the real story about the abuse Simon went through, so not a soul except Mac (his father) and Simon know about what happened. This, again, brings back up the fact that the PTSD is also undiagnosed, and this is something else that Simon desperately grabs onto to try and prove to himself that he doesn't have the debilitating issue. Despite Simon's past, he's been able to conceal it for years and this has not changed. It's buried deep inside of his brain and he tries to ignore it as much as he can, so he tends to not act very 'oddly' in front of people, except with the aforementioned situations. Mind-readers that cannot dip deep inside of his brain will not be able to find out about his history, although people that can read a scar's past will be able to if they touch the scars along his neck and back. Absolutely nobody knows when he comes to the island, though, and even those who do read his file will simply find information on him possibly having anger management problems because of how he lashed out against his father, but not a single thing about the abuse that occurred or his undiagnosed disorder. History Location: Simon was born in raised in a small town known as La Crosse in Wisconsin. The island is the very first place he's ever travelled to outside of his own state. When Simon was born, neither of her parents were happy with him or each other. The mother, Lisa, had only recentlyfound out that her husband, Mac, was a raging alcoholic who, instead of working, would run off to the bar everyday to drink with his pals. It didn’t take long after finding that out for Lisa to divorce him, especially after the loud arguments when he was drunk. Simon was very young at the age of the divorce, only about five or six, so it barely affected him apart from the sound of smashing bottles against walls causing him to cower in fear in his room. When the divorce papers were signed, it was decided that Simon would spend two weeks at his mom’s house, then alternate to spend two weeks at his dad’s. After a year or two, it wasn’t uncommon for Simon to return to Lisa’s house after the two weeks covered in scars and bruises, insisting that they were from “ATVing”, “snowmobiling”, or whatever came to Simon’s mind to use as an excuse at the time. He didn’t want his parents to fight again, so he refused to tell anybody that when he was at his father’s house he was being physically and emotionally beat by a man in a drunken rage. It didn’t help that his father endlessly threatened to kill him if he told anybody, so the fear in Simon’s heart was deeply rooted. From this, Simon has multiple scars across his body, more specifically along his back and his neck. It's hard to say why his father did it, whether it was because of his hatred for Simon's mother and everything associated with her, or because the alcohol caused him to react violently outwards towards those who were vulnerable. This was the hardest point in Simon's life, due to his fear of telling others about what was happening. He started to believe his father's abusive words about how he wasn't worth anything, which helped keep his mouth shut. Every night it seemed to be just as worse as the last, with his father shoving him on the ground and kicking him, hitting him with bottles, or even forcing his head down in the bath so he got the feeling of drowning all the while yelling at Simon about how useless and unwanted he was. The repetition of the abuse messed with Simon's developing brain, leaving him emotionally repressed and with trust and self-esteem issues even today. He attempted to end it all twice, once when he was 14 and again the next year. Both times he stopped, mainly because of his mother. His mother worked very hard to keep him happy when he was with her, and she was the only real parental figure that Simon had and loved. He stopped for her, knowing it would tear her apart if her only son committed suicide for reasons unknown to her. So, despite him getting bullied at school for being 'too short' and his weird gray hair and purple eyes (with no one to defend him due to his lack of friends) and despite being abused physically and emotionally by his father, Simon somehow managed to stick through it and tried his hardest to make friends to talk to and help defend him. This only worked to an extent, as he did manage to find people to sit at a lunch table with but he still was bullied when he was alone, which was often as he was unable to become best friends with anyone due to his trust issues. No matter how hard he tried, he could never stop fearing the abuse that would come every night he was with his father. Things started to change, as Simon grew older (around the age of 15) and became a stronger individual. He started getting sick of being hurt by his father, realizing that he actually was disgusted by him and his actions. The last time he was ever beat was the day Simon discovered his powers. It was late at night, outside, by the shed where their ATVs were kept, and his father was holding a bat and was about to hit Simon, who had already been pushed on the ground, with it. When he was about to, coins flew out from his dad's pocket to defend Simon from the blow. As a result of this, the bat did break, and Simon’s instincts took over and steel appendages sprouted from his back and slammed his father into the nearby shed exterior. His father, unfortunately, came out of it only with a minor concussion and a few broken bones. That was something that had been difficult to explain, especially when his father was rushed to the hospital. However, Simon had had time to come up with a story different from what had happened, partly because of his deep-rooted fear of his father as well as the fear of what he himself was becoming. He lied to the police and claimed the they were coming home from a late ATVing trip and his father accidentally drove into the shed, causing the damage that occurred. It was a tough story to believe, and the doctors barely seemed to buy it based on his injuries, but no other explanation had been presented so it seemed to be the only thing that made sense. Afterwards, when his father was out of the hospital, Simon refused to see him again, and they changed the legal documents so that his mom had full custody all the time. Simon simply reasoned this by saying his father and him no longer got along and they had nothing in common, and that there was no longer a feeling of mutual love between the two of them like he had with his mother. His father did not object, only giving the time of day to Simon to walk up to him and promise that one day he would be killed by his hand. Simon continued on his life for a few years, things beginning to look up for him. He was part of the gymnastic team for a number of years, becoming successful in that department, and he spent a year in wrestling. He had begun to get a lot of friends and expand his social circle despite his trust issues hindering him from having any close friends, until he was walking home from school one day to be grabbed by some officials of the Ashford Academy. He was told that his father informed them about Simon’s ‘special abilities’ and that Simon wasn't safe to be out and about, as Mac told the officials that Simon lashed out at him for no reason. The Ashford officials said that his gifts were also needed at the school, as they didn't want to put him on the field in fear that he would lash out at his fellow teammates like they were told he did to his own father – and debatably Mac did much worse than just kill Simon when telling the officials. Appearance Simon’s skin is a soft golden from spending a lot of his time baking in the sun’s glare, although there are certain partsof his skin that just don’t seem to burn and remain a pasty white. He has a relatively strong, lean-build with an emphasis on his core strength from his gymnastics. It helps that he’s relatively small for a Caucasian boy, being 5”5’. He is able to do things ranging from flips to handsprings, and his balancing skills are more than just impressive. Despite this emphasis on his abdominal muscles, he’s also very strong in both his legs and his arms, allowing him to lift in general quite a lot more than the average individual. He’s got very thick bones that allow him to endure a lot, making him look larger and give a lot more weight to him. He’s also endured quite a lot in his life, making him a lot more tolerant to pain and his arms have actually lost some feeling in them because of it. Additionally, there are scars absolutely everywhere across his back and the back of his neck, while his front is relatively unharmed based on just where he was beat when he was younger. Of course, there are a few scars on his front and he has a few on his scalp that are hidden by his hair, but they're not as noticeable. He therefore tends to try to keep his shirt on whenever he can, and when he goes to work out without a shirt or goes for a run he’ll just tell people the scars are from activities like ATVing or excessive tree-climbing as a kid. Simon’s face is almost an ovular shape with a pointed chin, giving him a ‘younger boy’ look in comparison to everyone else. His hair is a silver-y gray, and it has been his whole life, almost as if he was born old. This hair droops down in front of his eyes, providing a slight inconvenience that Simon has gotten used to. His eyes are a light violet caused through the mutations of his powers, giving him an almost eerie look. His eyebrows are relatively thin and don’t stand out much on his face, although they’re very active and move around a lot when Simon is upset or happy. Simon tends to always wear his school uniform, even if he’s out of class. The only difference is that occasionally he’ll button down the top or switch the pants for shorts when it’s very hot out. He likes keeping a degree of seriousness to his apparel, and on the uncommon casual day that he’s not wearing his school uniform, he’ll probably be wearing a red flannel on top of a black tank-top, with normal blue jeans and sneakers. Powers *Coin Manipulation - Simon is able to manipulate the metals in coins in telekinetic matters and is able to expand its metal outwards and change the coins shape (also able to mould coins together to form larger objects out of them, but this requires him to constantly focus on keeping the coins in that shape and it only lasts as long as he has focus on it. He also cannot use more metal than is already in the coins). He is not limited to moving a certain number of coins at a time and can move about as much as an average person would be able to lift at once, which is about 140lbs worth. He is also able to make this amount of coins using this power, but to make all 140lbs of coins it would exhaust so much energy that Simon would be knocked out. This is a lot of coins, enough to make shields, walking platforms, etc. He can manipulate coins only within a 100 feet radius of him, although this will expand as his power grows in strength. He can send these coins flying at very high speeds, about the same speed as a bullet, which can cause a lot of damage. However, he is limited to the weight of the coins he can carry to make and use, and the more he uses his power the weaker he gets. Once he’s made a coin it’s much easier for him to manipulate – and making 140lbs of coins would cause Simon to be knocked out almost entirely. He can maybe create about 30 loonie-sized coins at a time every minute and a half and use that alongside whatever other coins he has with him. Therefore, he keeps coins on his person at all times, although they weigh his pockets down quite a lot. This means he never gets to really use all 140lbs of coins at once, unless he's in an old-styled bank for some god forsaken purpose. For some reason, though, Simon is unable to manipulate metal objects larger than the size of a normal coin, causing to only really be able to use currency as his form of attack. *Steel Appendages - Simon, when he uses this power, is able to create four steel-like appendages that stick out from his back at a time. When the power is not in use, they simply retreat into his body leaving small bumps along the skin on his lower back, but these bumps can only be felt by the touch and are not very noticeable otherwise. These “arms” resemble a lot spider legs, and he can use them to hold or fling himself up. They’re pointed, and very strong, and although they can bend and move around almost like a liquid metal, they’re limited to only extend about fifteen feet in any direction of Simon. As Simon improves his ability, he’ll be able to make them move further. Extreme heat causes them to retreat back into Simon before it liquifies, but only if that extreme persists for extended periods of time and causes a threat of possibly melting the metal. They can move very quickly, although not as fast as Simon’s coins, allowing them to be used for a variety of things. However, using this power requires a lot of energy from Simon, and those appendages are a lot like muscles that need to be trained. If he strains them too much, he’ll be unable to use them for lengthy periods of time. Just as an arm or a leg, these appendages will cause pain to Simon if they’re harmed, which could strongly encourage Simon to retreat them into his body. Additionally, he can only keep them out for a certain length of time, which ranges from fifteen minutes to half an hour depending on how much Simon had eaten that day. These appendages are not necessarily immune to other metal manipulators when they’re out – but when they’re inside of his body they are. It’s much more difficult for metal manipulators to change the shapes of these appendages, though, and the changes caused to them don’t last very long (typically two minutes) as they recover quickly by draining some of Simon’s energy. However, these steel appendages can NOT be telekinetically influenced by metal manipulators, only changed in shape. *Enhanced Durability - Despite his muscles, Simon isn't extremely tough looking, as he's relatively short. However, this power alongside his thick bones gives him the strength he needs to survive being thrown into walls, beat with a bat, and stabbed with a knife. This ability allows him to endure what others cannot, which is especially useful when fighting because he can take a few dozen more punches than the average person before he starts to feel the pain bothering him. This, accompanied with the partial lack of feeling in some of his body parts allow him to go through a lot more seemingly unharmed until his body finally exhausts itself. When his father beat him, especially with other objects, this power contributed a lot to keeping him alive even if Simon didn't know it at the time. Category:Characters